Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Disney is exploring a free tier for Disney+ that would make some content available without a subscription. According to Nielsen data, the three largest free streamers accounted for 18.7% of watch time on U.S. TVs in April, up from 16.8% a year earlier and 12.7% in April 2024. Business Insider reports: Product and tech chief Adam Smith spoke about enabling free-tier content during a streaming town hall on Thursday afternoon, one staffer said. Smith didn't share a timeline for this initiative or a sense of the scope, this person added. A person familiar with Disney's streaming strategy said these talks are part of an ongoing discussion about concepts to better serve fans. Currently, the Disney+ and Hulu bundle costs $12.99 a month with ads or $19.99 without ads at full price.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OpenAI is retiring its ChatGPT Atlas browser less than a year after launch. Going forward, its browsing features will be shifted into a redesigned ChatGPT desktop app that also combines Codex, a built-in browser, and "ChatGPT Work" for acting across apps and files. PCMag reports: OpenAI disclosed Atlas's retirement in a Thursday post introducing a more powerful ChatGPT desktop app, following reports that the company planned on turning it into a "superapp." [...] In a tweet, OpenAI product staff member James Sun added, "The current targeted date for deprecation is 8/9, and we'll share more information in the upcoming days both in-app and via email."

The sunsetting means the Windows version of ChatGPT Atlas has been canceled, though the ChatGPT desktop app is still available on both Mac and Windows. The company is already touting the built-in browser, noting: "You can ask ChatGPT to research a market, compare sources, pull information from websites, or open and refine files from Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 inside the app. It can use the browser to bring in fresh context, take steps across web pages, and keep the work moving while you review and guide the result."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: The European Commission has ended an investigation into possible anticompetitive practices after SAP agreed to abolish reinstatement fees and reduce back-maintenance fees. The move could reduce barriers for customers considering third-party support for products nearing the end of their vendor support terms, including thousands of large businesses that rely on SAP ERP Central Component (ECC) to run their business operations. SAP's mainstream support for ECC ends in December 2027, while customers can opt for extended maintenance until December 2030 by paying an additional two percentage points on their maintenance fees. The most recent figures from Gartner showed that in Q4 2024 only 39 percent of worldwide ECC customers -- from a total of 35,000 -- had bought or subscribed to licenses to start their transition to SAP S/4HANA, the replacement ERP product.

In September last year, the European Commission launched a formal investigation into SAP's behavior in the aftermarket for maintenance and support services in Europe. It said it was responding to concerns that SAP restricted competition in this crucial aftermarket by making it harder for rivals to compete, leaving European customers with fewer choices and higher costs. In October, SAP published its response. "SAP's commitments aim at improving the financial attractiveness for customers who wish to reinstate SAP maintenance and support services. Thus, future costs associated with reinstatement will not financially prevent customers from choosing to terminate SAP maintenance and support for a given period of time," the document said (PDF).

SAP has now agreed to abolish reinstatement fees and reduce back maintenance fees charged to customers who return to SAP's support after a period of absence, the Commission confirmed. It also agreed to clarify conditions that allow customers to choose different maintenance and support service providers and different levels of support from SAP. The agreement is relevant to customers considering third-party support to extend their use of ECC beyond vendor maintenance. For example, last year, European retailer Kingfisher -- owner of well-known UK brands B&Q and Screwfix -- told a Gartner conference it had chosen Rimini Street to support ECC 6.0 because it saw insufficient value in migrating to SAP S/4HANA. [...] The commitments offered by SAP will remain in force globally for ten years.

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OpenAI's CEO of AGI deployment, Fidji Simo, is stepping down from her full-time role and becoming a part-time adviser after taking extended medical leave for a chronic neuroimmune condition. "Three months ago, I had to go on medical leave after a severe exacerbation of a chronic illness I've lived with for seven years," Simo wrote in a post Thursday on X. "During that time, it became clear that the road to recovery would be much longer and more complex than I had anticipated -- and that I needed to focus on it fully." Wired reports: Simo joined OpenAI's board of directors in March 2024. The following year, CEO Sam Altman hired her to take on the product and business organizations so he could focus on research and the company's data center buildout. Previously, Simo was the CEO of Instacart and head of the Facebook app at Meta.

Shortly before starting at OpenAI, Simo experienced a significant health relapse. She was diagnosed with postural tachycardia syndrome, or POTS, in 2019. "For my entire time here, I've postponed medical tests and new therapies to stay completely focused on the job and not miss a single day of work," she told OpenAI staff in a memo back in April, announcing her temporary departure. "It's now clear that I've pushed a little too far and I really need to try new interventions to stabilize my health."

News of Simo's medical leave came amid a larger executive shakeup that saw Brad Lightcap, OpenAI's former COO, transition to a role overseeing special projects. OpenAI president and cofounder Greg Brockman took over OpenAI's product strategy. In the months since Simo stepped back from OpenAI, the company further reorganized its product teams, positioning Thibault Sottiaux as head of the company's core products, including ChatGPT.

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HANDS HEAD ON Have you ever felt so lazy that reaching up to scroll on your MacBook’s trackpad was too much work? Yeah, me too – especially with the summer heat blanketing much of the Northern Hemisphere, even reaching my remote corner of the US. Thankfully, there’s an app for that. ScrollPods is a simple macOS app that’s been out since last November but which just came to my attention thanks to a blog post this week from its creator, Ahmed Mohamed, who hails from Austria. It lets anyone with a compatible Mac and supported headphones scroll through webpages, documents, and other scrollable content using nothing but a head tilt. Look down, and the page scrolls down; look up, and your content will scroll back that way. You can continue typing as you scroll. The idea, Mohamed wrote, was to allow himself to move up and down a document without taking his hands off the keyboard – not as a complete replacement for conventional navigation methods, but as a supplement. “ScrollPods is not trying to replace the mouse but when it comes to intuitive scrolling, I think it gives traditional scrolling methods like the mouse, scroll wheel, trackpad and touchscreen a good run for their money,” Mohamed wrote. “I enjoy ScrollPods when I’m reading long documents, when my hands are occupied, when I’m drinking an iced coffee or when I simply want to rest my hands.” With the ScrollPods website stating that the app is free, and its Mac App Store page reporting that it doesn’t collect any data, I decided to give it a shot. Installation was easy. It detected my second-gen AirPods Pro without issue, and we were off to the hands-free races. ScrollPods is responsive, easy to use, and isn’t too sensitive, either. It does tend to jump a bit if you slightly move your head, so if you’re fidgety you might want to turn the sensitivity down or enable the feature that automatically pauses the app with a quick tilt of the head. Speaking of settings, there are a lot of options to get ScrollPods working to your liking. Sensitivity, the threshold at which the app starts to scroll, acceleration speed, and even how fast the scrolling stops can all be tweaked, as can how you actually scroll – if you’d prefer to move content up and down by turning left and right, you can do that, too. You can also reverse the order so that looking up scrolls down and looking down scrolls up, if you’re a crazy person. It’s also a great accessibility feature, but Mohamed told us that wasn’t his original goal. “This was initially designed for comfort, I initially came up with ScrollPods because I needed a hands-free way to scroll documents as I was soothing my baby, often stuck in the same position for an hour,” Mohamed told The Register via email, adding that he didn’t want to make an assumption that it would be a significant accessibility product since he’s an able-bodied person. That said, he has heard from a number of people using ScrollPods for accessibility, and the feedback has been positive. “Feedback from the accessibility community … has been phenomenal and is also my current main focus,” Mohamed added. “Updates with a bigger emphasis on accessibility will follow.” As for whether Apple, famous for baking accessibility features into its products, could snipe his idea, he said he’s not entirely surprised it hasn’t happened yet. “Based on the simplicity, it seems so straightforward,” Mohamed said. “With an original concept, this is part of the game and I can’t influence what another company does.” If you want to try ScrollPods out, the link is included above. You’ll need a Mac running macOS 14 or newer and a pair of AirPods 3rd gen or newer, or any version of AirPods Pro, AirPods Max, and Beats Fit Pro. ScrollPods is free right now, but it might not stay that way – Mohamed said he hasn’t settled on final pricing. “Due to the accessibility element of ScrollPods, I do foresee a free tier,” he told us. ®

This month's major national USA protest event is Good Trouble Lives On, July 17-19. "Coined by civil rights icon Congressman John Lewis, "Good Trouble" is the act of coming together to take peaceful, non-violent action to challenge injustice. The power of collective non-violent action resulted in the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and we must maintain that same collective action to fight for voting rights today. This year's weekend of action will honor the legacy of Congressman John Lewis and carry the torch of the civil rights movement by doing what Lewis loved most – organizing, educating, and taking action."

As always, check mobilize.us for local protest events near you, there are events in every state every week. Indivisible, People Power United, Working Families Party and National Day Laborer Organizing Network are some organizations you can check out. Consider joining a local group! You can also check 50501's linktree for some highlighted national campaigns. Also of note, on July 14th are these two national training calls: Union of Concerned Scientists: Science Rising National Call. "It's not too late to register for the next Science Rising national call, which will highlight ways you can help counter the administration's anti-science and authoritarian actions, while laying the foundation for reimagining federal science policy for the public good. " ACLU: Organizing to Protect Democracy: August Recess Organizing Playbook. "Join ACLU People Power for our July Organizing to Protect Democracy session: a practical organizing training on how to engage members of Congress during August Recess and help advance civil liberties at the federal level."

The reality of living with Singapore's traffic noise [via]

Even uitvogelen hoe dit de schuld is van Geert Wilders maar: de vluchtelingenvriendjes van het Rode Kruis en VluchtelingenWerk STOPPEN met hulpverlening in Ter Apel. Komt allemaal door de inmiddels gevaarlijke overlast van 'een groepje mannen' dat weinig tot geen kans maakt op asiel in Nederland. Nou jaaaaa dat doen ze anders nooooooooooit! Die 'mannen' gaan dus maar hulpverleners lastigvallen - barmhartige Samaritanen die daar juist zijn voor de asielzoekers. Hulpverleners die water, dekens en maaltijden uitdelen, ondersteuning geven, hulp proberen te bieden, of desnoods een luisterend oor. De laatste week liepen de gemoederen in de wachtrij van Pretpark Nederland weer eens hoog op: steekpartijen, vechtpartijen, gezeik. En terwijl Bartje van den Brink smeekt om meer spreiding tikt de asiel-drup-0-meter van ons woningloze landje gewoon door: 710, 670, 690, 890...

Nu komt het erop aan als Nederlander. Kiest u voor die lieve zuiderburen, die alleraardigste Belgen die werden genaaid maar zelf nog nooit iemand kwaad hebben gedaan (we vergeten voor het gemak Congo even, onze gevallen WK favoriet) of ligt uw hart bij uw favoriete vakantieland Spanje, waar u van maart tot januari overwinterzomert in Benidorm, Carihuela, Torremolinos of een andere Costa om in Café Henk, Piet, Nel of Nol frikandellen met mayo naar binnen te werken en weg te spoelen met Hollands bier? Het is een keuze die bijzonder veel over u zegt. Wafels of tapas? Magritte of Picasso? Vlaamse frieten of patatas bravas? Zwart/geel/rood of rood/geel? Wielrennen of stierenvechten? Spa-Francorchamps of Circuit de Barcelona? Manneken Pis of Penelope Cruz? Anderlecht of Real Madrid? Zee of playa? Knokke of Blanes? Filip of Felipe? Zuid of zuidelijker? Clouseau of Julio Iglesias? Slapen of siësta? Gewoon stilzitten of flamencodansen? De Bruyne of Yamal? Rode Duivels of Rode Stieren? Wij kiezen België vanwege veel lekkerder bier dan dat Spaanse water, maar Spanje gaat natuurlijk wel gewoon winnen met 3-0. En weet u wat nou zo mooi is? GEEN RELLEN VANAVOND. Heerlijke pot voetbal kijken, dan zalig slapen zonder getoeter. FIJN!
Update 23' - HYDRATEREN (ja we kijken)
Update 29' - Ja en dan zit ie er toch al vrij snel in. 1-0 voor de Spanjaarden door Ruiz. Meh
Update 36' - BRAD PITT WOEEEEHOEE!!!
Update 39' - JAAAAAAAA BELGIEEEEEEEE BELGIEEEEEEEEE BELGIEEEEEEE. De man met de mooiste naam doet het: DE KETELAERE! 1-1
Update 42' - En dan moet de Beste Belg (Lukaku) nog komen

Spanje?

Social

Of België?

Social

Twee hulporganisaties die in Ter Apel bijsprongen om ondersteuning te bieden aan asielzoekers die tijdelijk geen toegang tot de opvang kregen, houden daar per direct mee op. De situatie op het open veld is te onveilig geworden, zeggen ze. Met hun besluit onderstrepen ze een oproep aan het kabinet om voor structurele opvang te zorgen.

De Britse politie heeft een verdachte opgepakt in de mogelijke moord op de conservatieve oud-parlementariër Ann Widdecombe. Zij werd donderdag dood in haar huis aangetroffen met ernstig hoofdletsel. De 78-jarige oud-parlementariër stond bekend om haar „hard rechtse” geluid en sterk conservatieve opvattingen.

De Gezondheidsraad had op basis van onderzoek van het RIVM geadviseerd om nieuwe woningen binnen 1.000 meter van geitenhouderijen te verbieden, maar de gevolgen van zo’n maatregel zijn volgens het kabinet te groot.

Le Pen heeft het volle recht de mogelijkheden van het juridisch systeem te benutten. Maar het is de wereld op zijn kop dat ze zich in deze door haar zelf gecreëerde situatie opstelt als slachtoffer van het systeem.